I was eleven years old when they said that people were being killed in Lagos because they protested the cancelation of a certain election. Then, Lagos was my dream city. I wished to settle in that city in my adult days. I loved Lagos because I loved brave people, people who stood by the truth, gingered by legends like Fela Kuti, Gani Fawehinmi and MKO into standing for transparency and justice. Think of it, you would never win an election freely and fairly and be mute about it. You would go all the way, calling on people you believed would be instrumental in influencing your stand on an unfair annulment. And what if you had the support of the masses, which chose to die for the movement (even before you were taken into custody)? What if you won June 12? What if you were told that the powers of the presidency would soon rest on your shoulders? What if you had a big dream for your nation? What if you declared yourself the president without waiting to be installed?

18years after the annulment of the nationwide elections, critically acclaimed to be the fairest that Nigeria has held as a nation, we’re still chasing about people that stole money (such as “BANK” “OLE”), people in power. It is the same power that a man died searching for, for the betterment of the entire masses. Would MKO have turned into one of our corrupt leaders? Who knows? At least, he would have been given the chance to try.

Till date we, as Nigerians, are yet to be told why our votes were ignored and the elections were canceled (as if I was even eligible to vote then). Maybe we no more want to know why. But my interest lies on our difficulty to produce good heads to run this nation.

I was just a little boy, played soccer on a grass field in Orji and wounded many times, hid my injuries from my parents for the fear of being fluffed up for playing football with boys that were older, and watched my wounded limb swell. That was the extent of the respect I had for my parents. They made sure they forced some senses into my head. Then, as a kid, I also feared the President who wore uniforms, because I was warned never to say anything about him in the open. I heard of the many people that were arrested, and nothing was heard of their whereabouts again. What did they do? They said the leaders were doing badly. And those that he could not arrest, the sharp guys, ran away.I feared the dictator then, but I did not have an iota of respect for him. No one that talked about him, in secret, respected him. It didn’t matter anyways. It didn’t matter that they did not respect him because they only talked about him in closed cupboards.

But I heard of men that talked about him, the bulk of whom he could lay no finger upon. How come he did nothing to our Fela?

Now that we have democracy with us and no one is chasing us about with batons and guns, now that we are no more children in kindergartens, should we not contribute? Yes, we must volunteer with our words. Maybe, Nigeria would one day learn to prosecute the corrupt, and not just parade them in the media and bail them the next day. Maybe if we really learnt from the mistakes of the June 12 Elections Annulment, we would have been transformed as a nation. Maybe we wouldn’t have had the Bank-Oles.

I was just eleven years when THE GENERAL annulled the free and fair elections. Now, I’m 29.

One Response so far.

Interesting. I could remember I was still in primary school then. I mustn't have been more than 5+ then. I could recall how we ran helter-skelter with the riots that trailed the annulment. We would be quickly discharged from school and children would be left by the school's authority to dialogue with their feet on the tumultuous paths home. People like Bank---Ole should really be damned with the noose of the masses.

Many people work with the mouth of a pistol held on their foreheads. They know what to do, but they end up doing none of what they know beca...

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My name is Binyerem Ukonu. I'm the Editor of this blog. This is a group for African writers. It's where we post ads on literary events, workshops, agents, publishers, releases, news etc. We also encourage writers to post their works of poetry, short stories, awards etc. iWRITE stands for a group that grooms upcoming writers of all sorts in Africa. It's an Afroshadez Limited Project.